Hospital, Indiana

 

Hospital, Indiana

Phil is so restless, Air Force vet,
big black beard, hates hippies
though he looks like one.
“Flag-burners,” he calls them.
From war he learned: “Life changes fast.”

As tech support Phil has seen every corner
of this hospital, pulled every wire.
Hear that scream? Burn patient, little girl
in physical therapy, breaks Phil’s heart.
Want a poker game? Always one in the morgue.
Walk into the autopsy room, you might see
a doc pulling parts from a man’s chest
like lifting the head gasket on a Jeep.
“Death never changes,” Phil says.
“And it sucks.”

In the recovery room this hippie nurse
is changing an IV bag over one man after surgery
when another guy goes into convulsions
so the nurse drops the bag on the first man’s chest
and he grunts, eyes roll, and he passes out
while she runs to the spasm guy.
There’s no other staff. Phil tries to scram with
“Um, I’ll come back later to fix your terminal”
but the nurse with big dark eyes
makes a for-God’s-sake pleading face,
so Phil holds the IV bag.

That night he sees her waiting for a bus
clutching herself like a freezing gypsy in tears
because the guy with convulsions just died
so he gives her a ride home but first
he takes her bowling, she needs it.
Life changes fast. Turns out they both
love bowling, who’da thunk it?

A peacenik and a flyboy.
Hospitals heal people, sometimes.
“Now we got three kids. We all go bowling.
Good karma, ya know?”

……

From my book Random Saints
First published in Fifth Wednesday. Thank you editor Vern Miller